


Don't Touch

by Ninja_Librarian



Series: Shidge Month 2018 [10]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Day 10: Tech Wizard, Don't piss Pidge off, F/M, One guy learns this the hard way, Shidge Month 2018, Two others do not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 02:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14275455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninja_Librarian/pseuds/Ninja_Librarian
Summary: You don't touch Pidge's stuff. Especially when that stuff is Shiro.In which Pidge does something she doesn't regret. But Lance and Matt make her regret the thing she said while doing it...





	Don't Touch

Pidge Holt believed herself to be a fairly simple woman.

Pidge loved science. Pidge loved robots. Pidge loved computers. Pidge loved peanut butter. Pidge loved the Green Lion. Pidge loved her family—both blood and her family with Voltron. Pidge especially loved Shiro.

But what Pidge hated?

In school, being the only girl in the advanced STEM classes. The condescending looks by the guys in those classes, that continued even after she had far surpassed them. Their tendency to explain concepts she already understood, their taunts that she should go back to Home Ec. And especially when they acted like they were better than her.

Pidge had forgotten how much she had hated that until she was back on Earth, and she, Hunk and Shiro agreed to do a demonstration of Shiro's Galra arm for Earth doctors and scientists. After all, Galra or not, the prosthetic was far more advanced than any prosthetic a human had made, and they wanted to see if they could replicate a much safer version.

Pidge, being the leading expert on the Galra arm (and the man it was attached to), would be leading the demonstration with Hunk helping her out.

She tried not to feel disappointed when no women were part of this group.

She tried not to feel annoyed when these men approached Hunk first, then promptly directed towards Pidge only for her to receive looks of surprise and less enthusiastic greetings accompanied by awkward smiles.

She tried to stifle her feelings of murder when the youngest of them—white guy, wearing expensive brands, stupid frat boy haircut, maybe a year or two older than Pidge herself, seemed to look down on even his peers—didn’t bother to hide a small scoff upon being introduced to Pidge.

She had thought of a thousand different ways to hide the body and get away with the crime when he said, “When I heard that this presentation was put on by one of the famous—and infamous—Holts, I had assumed it would be your father or brother.”

But no. She would do what she came here to do. She was a Paladin of Voltron, she was better than all of them combined. Her left pinky toe was smarter than all of them combined.

She was a tech wizard, a robotic genius, practically a goddess compared to these peasants.

She put on a pleasant smile that Allura would have been proud of, and began. 

And that’s where the trouble began.

Pidge had her tools laid out neatly, resting on a cart beside her. But as soon as she put down her first tool to pick up her next, the guy who had laughed at her—who had some sort of stupid rich-person last name like Pinkerbottom or whatever—snatched up that tool.

That was strike one.

“Sir,” Pidge said tightly. “Please put that down exactly where you found it.”

Pinkerbottom let out a huff, but did what he was told. “Can you blame a man of science for wanting to hold an extraterrestrial tool?”

“Yes, I can.” Pidge said without missing a beat, then turned back to her lecture, using her tool to point out specific parts and pieces, which was a little difficult as her subject was shaking with silent laughter and her assistant was behind him smirking.

When she took off another metallic plate of Shiro’s arm, she had barely turned back only to see out of the corner of her eye that Pinkerbottom had picked it up. 

Strike two.

“Dr. Pinkerbottom,” Pidge said through gritted teeth. “If you do not stop touching my tools and the pieces of the prosthetic without my explicit permission, I will have to ask you to leave.”

At that, Pinkerbottom set the piece down and gave Pidge a look she hadn’t seen in many years and had been glad for it. “Perhaps, _Miss_ Holt, you do not truly understand the scientific method and research.”

The fact that Pinkerbottom did not get an Altean screwdriver up his nose was testament to Pidge’s level of restraint. (And the fact that Keith wasn’t there to get riled up with her.)

“Perhaps you do not understand that you are trying to tamper with an alien superweapon that only I and two others truly understand how it functions,” Pidge responded coolly. “And it is Dr. Holt. I have a doctorate.”

Sure, it was technically speaking an honorary doctorate, but she had completed Ph. D level work during her downtime while, you know, _saving the entire quiznaking universe_ but no big deal.

She went back to the lecture, trying to keep her calm and professionalism in spite of how many times she had been insulted. But when she looked back from picking up another tool, and saw Pinkerbottom’s fingers pinching one of the incredibly delicate tubes of quintessence—the one that was literally attached to Shiro’s nerve endings as she had just said, the thing that was currently making Shiro’s jaw tighten and his body rigid—Pidge lost her mind and saw red.

Strike three.

Before she knew it, her arm reared back and the metal tool was hitting Pinkerbottom’s hand. Hard.

Pinkerbottom let out a scream as he withdrew his hand and because Pidge was fed up, because Pidge’s wrath had been unleashed, because _you didn’t screw around with what was left of her boyfriend’s quiznaking arm_ , she put the tool to his jugular as she growled, “ _Don’t touch my stuff!_ ”

Pinkerbottom’s eyes were full of pained tears and he was clutching his injured hand to his chest, but he slowly nodded and took a few steps backward towards the back of the group.

Pidge resumed her smile and looked at the rest of the horrified scientists. “Now then, I think we will be able to continue without any further interruptions.”

*****

It took Pidge a while to realize the impact of her exact words. (The impact of her actions, she would later learn, was two broken fingers and a newfound respect from all that were in that room, all that knew someone in that room, all that had taken a class from someone in that room, and all who had heard the story that was whispered around in college 101 classes and at conferences; Pidge essentially became a urban legend in one go.)

More exactly, Lance and Matt helped her realize the impact of her words. Because the first opportunity he got, Hunk ran out of the room and apparently called them, along with Keith, Allura and Coran, and told them about what had happened.

“Hey, Pidge,” Lance said the next day, coming up behind her while Pidge was metaphorically elbow-deep in code. “Whatcha doing?”

Distracted, Pidge answered, “Stuff.”

She snapped out of her distracted haze when Lance teased, “Geez, Pidgey, TMI. I don’t need to know everything about your and Shiro’s private life.”

Pidge blinked.

And her heart sank.

“Oh,” She said, her eyes going wide at Lance’s smirk. “Oh no…”

From that day on, whenever Matt and Lance wished to annoy Pidge, all they had to do was refer to Shiro as ‘stuff’. Not just any ‘stuff’, but Pidge’s ‘stuff’.

Matt would be holding his hand out for a high-five from Shiro, then withdraw at the last second, calling out, “Hey, Pidge! Can I touch your stuff?”

“GO TO QUIZNAK, MATT!”

Packing for a camping trip, Keith made the mistake of saying “Only bring the important stuff.”

“Of course we are going to bring the important stuff,” Lance said indignantly. “We invited Shiro, didn’t we? Like Pidge would forget him and leave him at home.”

Lance had an empty canteen thrown at his head.

At Thanksgiving, Colleen was rather confused when Matt’s response to her saying that she needed to stuff the turkey was to say “No, Stuff isn’t a turkey, Stuff is a Shiro,” and for her daughter’s response was to let out an ungodly scream and to dump the bowl of cranberry sauce on her brother’s head.

Cleaning out an old supply room in the Castle, Coran observed that there was a lot of stuff in there, only for Lance to get mock-offended and say that Shiro was perfectly proportioned, thank you very much. Pidge felt very satisfied at the screech Lance made when she struck his butt with the end of her broom, and apparently Keith was also satisfied given how he needed fifteen minutes to stop laughing.

Two days after the ill-fated demonstration, Pidge flopped onto the couch beside Shiro with a groan, already fed up with her brothers, both the biological one and the one she claimed as family, who were already driving her off the wall.

“I didn’t mean to refer to you as my stuff,” Pidge mumbled into the couch cushion.

“I don’t mind,” Shiro said with a shrug. Sure, it would get annoying down the road, but he liked the implication that he was Pidge’s. He suddenly smirked. “But, Katie?”

“Hmmmph?” Pidge grumbled into the cushion.

“Am I hot stuff?”

Pidge laid still for a very long time, then with a huge sigh she lifted her head, narrowing her eyes at him as she rested her chin on the couch. “Yes, Shiro, you’re hot stuff.”

Shiro’s smirk grew, now a little smug as he nestled in to the couch. “I always thought so.”

Pidge rolled her eyes, but peeled herself off the couch, crawling into Shiro’s lap. “And don’t you forget it.”


End file.
